Beyonce’s father admits he dated her mother because he thought she was white

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NEW YORK – JUNE 23: (EXCLUSIVE) (L-R) Singer Beyonce Knowles (C) poses with her father and manager Matthew Knowles and her mother Tina Knowles at the “Beyonce: Beyond the Red Carpet auction presented by Beyonce and her mother Tina Knowles along with the House of Dereon to benefit the VH1 Save The Music Foundation June 23, 2005 in New York City. The exhibition will showcase 18-24 costumes worn by Beyonce chronicling her film, television and video appearances. (Photo by Frank Micelotta/Getty Images)

Matthew Knowles, the father of Beyonce, admits in a new interview that colorism influenced his decision to date Tina Knowles, the mother of the superstar singer and her sister Solange.

He said he initially thought Tina was white.

In the interview with Ebony to promote his new book, “Racism: From the Eyes of a Child,” Knowles reveals that this preference was deeply ingrained in him as he grew up in Alabama in the 1950s and 1960s.

Colorism, as defined by novelist Alice Walker, is the prejudice or preferential treatment of people based solely on their skin color, whereas racism is a prejudice based on qualities in addition to skin color, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Knowles, his daughter’s former manager and now a visiting professor at Texas Southern University, admitted he grew up looking down on dark-skinned black women, even though he is black himself.

“When I was growing up, my mother used to say, ‘Don’t ever bring no nappy-head black girl to my house,'” Knowles told Ebony. “In the Deep South in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, the shade of your blackness was considered important. So I, unfortunately, grew up hearing that message.” The prejudice led him to date mostly white women or “very high-complexion black women that looked white,” he said.

That’s the reason he started dating the woman who would become his wife of 31 years. “I actually thought when I met Tina, my former wife, that she was white,” Knowles told Ebony.

When he found out later that Tina wasn’t white, he also learned that she was “actually very much in-tune with her blackness.”

The couple announced in 2009 that they were breaking up after it was learned that Knowles had fathered a child with actress Alexsandra White, Cosmopolitan reported. Their divorce was finalized in 2011. That same year, Beyoncé announced that she was severing professional ties to her father. The father and daughter reportedly mended fences a year later after Beyonce’s first child, Blue Ivy, was born.

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Knowles also pointed out to Ebony how colorism is a controversial topic in the music industry, saying that light-skinned artists like his daughters seem to have an edge over their darker-skinned counterparts.

“When it comes to black females, who are the people who get their music played on pop radio?” Knowles said. “Mariah Carey, Rihanna, the female rapper Nicki Minaj, my kids (Beyoncé and Solange), and what do they all have in common?”

Martha Ross is a features writer who covers everything and anything related to popular culture, society, health, women’s issues and families. A native of the East Bay and a graduate of Northwestern University and Mills College, she’s also a former hard-news and investigative reporter, covering crime and local politics.

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